As Arab TV stations finally show pictures of American tanks in Baghdad as well as Arab journalists dead or wounded from US attacks, gloom and anger are spreading across this city in clouds as thick as the smoke of burning oil. Few places in the Middle East have such a high proportion of progressive English-speaking intellectuals as Jordan's capital, Amman. Yet it is precisely among this lively elite that despondency and fury are at their heaviest.

Watching CNN and the BBC, they have known that the US and British invasion was advancing. They fear the impact on ordinary Jordanians and Palestinians as the truth sinks in. There was a week of euphoria when allied forces were caught out in false claims of victory at Umm Qasr and Iraqis were seen to be mounting an unexpected degree of resistance. Now defeat is imminent, they feel.

"It's like 1967 when I was a kid at boarding school and for three days we were told that Nasser was shooting Israeli planes down like flies. Then we cried and cried," says Mustafa Hamarneh of Jordan's Centre for Strategic Studies. "Iraq will be the first country to be recolonised for a second time. Eighty-five years after the British came, they and the Americans are back", sighs Adnan Odeh, a former Jordanian ambassador to the UN.

At the weekend Arab-language newspapers were still covering the claims of victory issued by Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. Iraqi forces had re-taken the airport. Hundreds of US troops had been killed. "He's a source of therapy. They don't examine his credibility. If he doesn't appear for a few hours, they're miserable", said Odeh. "When it is over, frustration will be all the deeper".

Without "embedded" reporters Arab stations have not been as heavy on battle footage as their British and US counterparts. This has meant they have focused on civilians' suffering, unarmed families detained at roadblocks, hooded prisoners, people cut off from supplies being reduced to beggars and looters, and thousands fleeing Baghdad.

Everyone here has images of humiliation that stick in the mind. Many cite a photo, shown on several front pages, which they found a shocking symbol of the looming occupation. It showed three Iraqi women in long black robes and veils being body searched by an American soldier.

While every Arab government - apart from Syria -has been too timid to call the war illegal, brave reporting by independent Arab journalists has shown the war's human reality, even if they sometimes pretend things are better on the battlefield than they really are. These reporters have served as the bridge across the widening gap between the Arab "street" with its strong pan-Arab emotions and the narrow nationalism of feeble rulers protecting their chairs. No wonder US forces first tried to close these TV stations, then did not hesitate to strike their offices.

For civilians, an end to fighting is always a relief and the pictures of a few waving civilians in Basra that Tony Blair touted in Belfast yesterday are not the whole story. Freedom from the fear of bombs and bullets may be a more immediate cause for joy than freedom from the fear of Saddam Hussein.

Beyond Basra, anger with Britain and America has grown. Blair's promises of action to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are not taken seriously. Some Jordanians see him as a liar; a few think he sympathises with Palestinian grievances. Both sides feel his influence with the US is nil.

George Bush is despised even by those who used to admire the US. "You can no longer talk about American good intentions. People won't believe you. Governments that want good relations with the United States will have a hard time", says Taher al Masri, a former prime minister of Jordan. "There is bitterness across the board, among the rich, the poor, the young, the old, the US-educated. There will be more extremism, more introversion and more suspicion of the west".

The effects may not be seen quickly. They will add a new layer to the frustrations of decades. A generation that was unborn or too young to understand the defeats of 1967 and 1973 now has its own bitter experience. Arabs who fear a rise in Islamic fundamentalism take comfort from the peace marches in Europe and America, the anti-war stand of Schröder and Chirac, and the position of the Vatican. The protests showed this was not a clash of civilisations but an unpopular war run by a small coalition of the chilling.

Like the British in 1918, the US did not come to Iraq to bring democracy, Jordanians believe. They have already set it back across the Middle East. The advocates of modernisation and secular values are on the defensive. Many who have good degrees will seek to emigrate to the very world that has dealt them another humiliation. The rest will retreat into a shell of suppressed rage, from which few doubt that yet more violence will emerge.